There have been provided various electric shavers each configured to be used in a state in which a blade frame part including an outer blade is attached to a body part including an inner blade. In such an electric shaver, the inner blade is slid on the outer blade of the blade frame part attached to the body part, and hair such as a beard let in via blade holes in the outer blade is cut between the sliding inner blade and the outer blade.
Generally, in the electric shaver described above, the outer blade is provided vertically movable by giving a certain clearance between the blade frame part and the outer blade when they are attached together. With such a structure, however, the outer blade has a poor skin-following capability, and this poor following capability becomes problematic especially when multiple outer blades are provided.
To solve this, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. Hei 4-220282, for example, proposes an electric shaver which, as shown in FIG. 10, includes: an outer blade cassette 11 formed of outer blades 5, outer blade frames 13 to respectively fix the outer blades 5 thereto, and a holding frame 14 to hold the outer blade frames 13 vertically movable; and an outer peripheral frame 12 to which the outer blade cassette 11 is detachably attached from above to form a blade frame part 4 (see the arrow in FIG. 10).
In the electric shaver having the above structure, each outer blade 5 itself is fixed to the corresponding outer blade frame 13 and thus held stable, whereas the outer blade frame 13 is allowed to move vertically with respect to the holding frame 14 in a smooth manner within a large range. Accordingly, the skin-following capability can be improved. In addition, in this electric shaver, replacement of the outer blades 5 only involves removal of the outer blade cassette 11 from the outer peripheral frame 12 and replacement with another one. Thus, the required work is simple. It is also economical since the outer peripheral frame 12 can be used again without replacement.
However, since the electric shaver provided with the above outer blade cassette 11 has a structure which allows the holding frame 14 of the outer blade cassette 11 to be attached to the outer peripheral frame 12 from above, it is inevitable that almost the entire outer periphery of the holding frame 14 in the attached state is exposed to the outside. This has been one of causes of spoiling its high quality impression.
To avoid this, it is conceivable for the above electric shaver that a surface treatment, for example, is performed to enhance the design of the holding frame 14 itself. Nonetheless, there are still a problem that a joint portion between the holding frame 14 and the outer peripheral frame 12 is largely exposed in a center of the blade frame part 4 and thus spoils the high quality impression, and a problem of difficulty in providing the outer blade cassette 11 as a replacement part at low cost.